My neighbor has a sour cherry tree that is fully ripe right now. I was able to get about 4.5 lbs today when he was at work…j/k about at work. The cherries are awesome, sour with a hint of sweetness. After picking I froze the cherries in one pound bags. The question is how much to use? I have read anywhere from 2 pound all the way up to fifteen pounds. I plan on making a wheat beer and adding them to the secondary. Here is the recipe for the wheat beer. Any thoughts????

Because cherries have a nice scent, I recomend leaving out the aromatic hops at the end (the ones you have at 5 minutes. I once did this by accident with a strawberry blonde (had been drinking) and noticed that I got a much better scent of the strawberries that way, so I do it with any fruit beer now.

I'm no expert on recipes, but wouldn't that amount of hops not be desired in a fruit beer, on compete with the flavors?

Yeah good point, I just used a recipe a friend of mine gave me but added the cherries. I'll repost the updated recipe. I was going to make a ten gallon batch and split it one using cherries and the other just as is. Any suggestions on how to do this.

swmbo and i picked 13lb sour cherries tonight from a friend. half are pitted and in the freezer and we'll prep the rest tomorrow. i'm hoping she'll let me use 8-9lb for brewing and thinking of doing a 10g wheat and using all them on half of the batch or maybe do like 6lb in half and 3lb in the other half. i've never used fruit b4, do I just thaw put into the secondary and rack on top?

i'd love to do a lambic but i've heard they need a lot of aging and not sure if i'll be able to wait it out. i'd love to get info about your cherry brews to help me decide what to do.

Yeah good point, I just used a recipe a friend of mine gave me but added the cherries. I'll repost the updated recipe. I was going to make a ten gallon batch and split it one using cherries and the other just as is. Any suggestions on how to do this.

throw it into 2 primary fermentors and then rack one to fruit and rack the other to the clearing tank.

i'd love to do a lambic but i've heard they need a lot of aging and not sure if i'll be able to wait it out. i'd love to get info about your cherry brews to help me decide what to do.

sorry for the double post.

Lambic's need a ton of time (like a year). I searched the internet for fruit beer recipes (we are going to start growing some fruit trees next year, so I wanted to make sure that I would be able to use the fruit in beer), and ran across a ton of cherry recipes. My favorite is still to this day is the O'Fallen's Cherry Chocolate Beer.